THE FORREST GUMP LIFE OF DIANE RAVITCH
A BOX OF CHOCOLATES AND A RACE TO SAVE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
Forrest Gump’s famous line, uttered by a man of simple mind who nonetheless managed to be present for every seismic shift in American history, rings surprisingly true for the legendary historian of education, Diane Ravitch. Except, of course, that Ravitch, with her formidable intellect and towering academic CV, is decidedly not simple-minded.
Yet, as her new memoir, An Education: How I Changed My Mind about Schools and Almost Everything Else (Columbia University Press, October 2025), makes clear, her life has been a Forrest Gump-esque journey through the great ideological battlefields of American schooling. She didn't just observe the history of educational reform—she ran right through the middle of it, often wearing the ideological uniform of the very side she would later come to vehemently oppose.
And much like our cinematic hero, her greatest journey was an unexpected, decade-long run across the intellectual landscape, ultimately leading her home to the bedrock of public education.
From Alabama to the White House: An Unlikely Tour Guide
Like Forrest, who found his path dictated by his exceptional running ability, Ravitch’s life was steered by her singular talent for intellectual rigor and historical analysis.
The Run from Houston: Ravitch started as a historian, not an activist. Her early career, steeped in the academic history of education, parallels Forrest’s early, unintentional feats. She was just doing her thing, and suddenly, she was there—present at the "Schoolhouse Door" of policy.
The Government Service Tour: Just as Forrest was drafted into the Vietnam War, Ravitch was enlisted into the heart of the educational establishment. She served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush. She wasn't just observing the powerful; she was the powerful, advocating for the very "national standards" and "accountability" measures that would later become the ideological enemy. It was her time in the "jungle" of federal policy that would eventually lead to her Medal of Honor: a heroic change of mind.
The Ping-Pong Diplomacy: Ravitch spent years among the New York intelligentsia and conservative think tanks, promoting market-based reforms. This was her intellectual "ping-pong diplomacy"—a master of the inside game, respected by all political sides, even while playing in a highly controlled, high-stakes environment.
The Shrimp Boat of Self-Correction
Forrest’s dearest friend, Bubba, dreams of a shrimping business, and Forrest heroically fulfills that promise. Ravitch, too, fulfilled a promise to her own historical conscience by launching a new venture: The Ravitch Shrimp Boat of Self-Correction.
After years of promoting the tenets of No Child Left Behind, charter schools, and high-stakes testing, she had her Hurricane Cleansing—the moment she saw the toxic real-world effect of these reforms on teachers and students.
In 2010, she published The Death and Life of the Great American School System, a book that was essentially a 296-page public recantation. The message was simple: she was wrong. The solution wasn't privatization; it was recognizing that poverty is the primary driver of educational failure. This moment was her Jenny reunion—the truth she had to run all the way back to find.
Just Keep Running: The Digital Activism Phase
When Forrest’s heart was broken, he ran. For three years, he ran across America, inspiring an unwitting following. When Diane Ravitch’s intellectual heart was broken by the corporate reform movement, she ran, too, trading in her academic podium for a keyboard.
This is where my personal story intersects with the legend.
As a parent from California, searching for answers and shocked by the decline of public schools, found her on a different kind of highway: Twitter and her blog. I wasn't a powerful policy figure; I was just a person on the side of the road, looking for the truth.
And here's the magic of the Ravitch-Gump parallel: She saw me.
Forrest Gump would talk to anyone at his bus stop. Diane Ravitch, the former Assistant Secretary of Education, talked to Presidents and, astonishingly, she talked to me—Mr. Nobody, the public school parent. The fact that a public school parent could tweet a question and receive a reply from one of the nation’s foremost education historians is the ultimate, democratic, "Life is like a box of chocolates" surprise.
Her blog became her cross-country run, a relentless, daily output that inspired an army of parents, teachers, and bloggers—the Network for Public Education (NPE)—to fight the privatization movement. She became an "activist on behalf of public schools," fulfilling the ultimate promise of her life's work: to stop just studying history and actually start steering it back toward justice.
An Education: The Memoir of Integrity
Her new memoir, An Education, isn't just a policy book; it's a testament to intellectual integrity.
It’s the final scene where Forrest, having seen it all, sits down to raise his son and send him off to school. Ravitch, having survived the political wars, the corporate charters, and the billionaire's agenda, is now focused on the foundational truth: the public school itself.
The book is an honest look at the journey—the disappointments, the sweetness, the surprising turns, and the final destination. It tells the incredible story of a historian who had the courage to change her mind publicly—a feat far more heroic than saving a platoon, because she saved countless careers, schools, and the democratic principle of shared public education along the way.
It turns out that a life spent in the middle of history, constantly running toward the next surprising turn, truly is An Education. And for all of us following her tweets, blog posts, and books, it's a story well worth the read. Run, Diane, run!
Big Education Ape: DIANE RAVITCH: FROM CONSERVATIVE CRUSADER TO PUBLIC EDUCATION'S FIERCEST DEFENDER https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2025/07/diane-ravitch-from-conservative.html
An Education | Columbia University Press https://cup.columbia.edu/book/an-education/9780231563161/
Book Review :: An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else by Diane Ravitch - NewPages.com https://www.newpages.com/blog/books/book-reviews/an-education-by-diane-ravitch/
An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else: Ravitch, Diane: 9780231220293: Amazon.com: Books https://www.amazon.com/Education-Changed-Schools-Almost-Everything/dp/0231220294?